Aircraft brake control systems are known in the art. These brake control systems function to provide brake control to brakes on the landing gear of the aircraft. The brakes exert a braking force on the wheels of the gear in order to slow the aircraft during taxiing, landing, rejected take-off, etc.
For reasons such as system redundancy and/or robustness, a brake control system may include multiple brake control channels controlling respective brakes on a given gear. The multiple brake control channels may serve to control respective brakes (e.g., respective brake actuators) on a given wheel of the landing gear. In addition, or in the alternative, multiple brake control channels may serve to control the brake(s) on respective wheels.
Problems can arise, however, with the use of multiple brake control channels. Because the different channels control different brakes on a given gear, the amount of braking delivered by the respective brakes may not be equal, i.e., one brake may be doing very little braking while the other brake is doing most of the work. Additionally, it is possible that two independent control channels could control the brakes in a way that causes dynamic instability—like twisting the gear when the brake applications get out of phase.
In view of the aforementioned shortcomings associated with conventional brake control systems, there is a strong need in the art for a brake control system, device and method for maintaining substantially equal workloads between the brakes controlled by the respective brake control channels. Moreover, there is a strong need in the art for a brake control system and method for avoiding dynamic instability.